Zoo Revision History


Current versions as of 1986/09/21:  Zoo 1.21, Ooz 1.03, and Atoz 1.00.


1986/09/21     Zoo was revised to eliminate the "Disk full" error message
Zoo 1.21       that version 1.20 was giving when the output was piped with
               the "-print" and "xp" commands.  Except for this fix, Zoo
1.21 is identical to Zoo 1.20.


1986/09/06     Substantial performance improvements were made.  Compression
Zoo 1.20       ratios are now much better.  Files are now archived about 15%
Ooz 1.03       faster and extracted about 5% faster.  Some minor bugs were
               fixed.  Using the "1" (one) modifier with the "D" (delete)
command now properly updates the archive's timestamp.  Adding comments to an
archive now preserves the archive's timestamp.  The character that marks a
comment in a verbose listing is now "|" instead of ">", because it looks
better.  This is Zoo version 1.20.  Archives created by Zoo 1.20 are smaller
than those created by previous versions, especially for binary files.  Zoo
1.20 retains full compatibility with Zoo 1.10 and its archives may be ex-
tracted by all prior versions of Zoo.  All documentation for Zoo 1.20
remains unchanged.

Ooz was also revised to share Zoo's faster extraction speed and is now
version 1.03.


1986/08/24     Comments were implemented.  The user may optionally attach a
Zoo 1.10       comment of up to 65,535 characters long to any archived file.
               This is now Zoo version 1.10.  The following commands are
available to manipulate attached comments.

Novice mode:  the -list command always lists any attached comments.  The new
command -comment sweeps through the archive, displays any previous comment
for each matching file, and allows the user to:  hit return to leave the
previous comment unchanged;  or type "/END" to remove the previous comment;
or type a new comment terminated by "/END".  Expert mode:  v is like Novice
-list, c is like Novice -comment, and ac is like Expert a and Novice -add
except that it prompts for an optional comment for each file as it is
added.

If a file added to an archive replaces another of the same name, any
original comment is preserved and becomes attached to the newly-added file.

Earlier versions of Zoo will list and extract version 1.10 archives and
delete and undelete files in them but will refuse to modify them in any
other way thus ensuring archive integrity.


1986/08/20     The update (u) option will now add a file to an archive only
Zoo 1.03N      if the copy being added is newer than the copy already in the
               archive.  If update (u) and new (n) are used together, a file
is added to the archive if it isn't already in the archive OR if it is and
the copy being added is newer.

A problem with setting of the datestamp of archives was fixed.

Some commonly-used Novice commands were added.  These are complete words
rather than single characters:  add, extract, test, print, freshen, update,
list, and delete.  Each word may be abbreviated by any amount.  The original
one-character commands are now known as Expert commands and they remain
unchanged except for the different functioning of u and n (above).

When an archive is packed, the original is now always renamed to a ".bak"
extension even if it is on a different disk.  This will avoid confusing the
user.

Some of the messages were made slightly more friendly.  This is now version
1.03N (N stands for Novice).


1986/08/17     Zoo was allocating and deallocating memory as needed for each
Zoo 1.02       file added or extracted.  This apparently led to fragmenta-
Ooz 1.02       tion of memory and conflicts with memory-resident software in
               some peculiar situations.  Changed the memory allocation
strategy to allocate all needed memory just once.  This is now Zoo version
1.02.  Zoo's sign-on message now correctly identifies its version number.
Ooz was similarly fixed and is now Ooz version 1.02.  Most people will not
see a difference in functioning between versions 1.01 and 1.02.


1986/08/16     Zoo 1.00 failed to work with DOS 3.x because DOS 3.x returns
Zoo 1.01       some new error codes;  fixed.  Made minor revisions in
               ZOO.DOC.  It was also found that ATOZ.BAT would not work with
the DOS 3.x batch language.  Revised ATOZ.DOC to document this
incompatibility.  Released Zoo 1.01 which works with DOS 3.1 (but Atoz still
doesn't).  Warning:  ZOO.EXE version 1.01 still says "version 1.00" in the
sign-on message.


1986/08/15     Initial release of Zoo 1.00, Ooz 1.00, and Atoz 1.00.  These
               were developed and tested only on DOS 2.x.